Last year, Republicans gleefully produced a terrifying chart purporting to represent the Democrat plan for health care reform; an approach to political debate and problem solving that was best summarized by Jon Stewart:

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Wow! That’s incredibly honest! You could spend months meticulously constructing a clipper ship piece by piece in a glass bottle. Or, you could do the Republican method and just roll a dildo in glitter.

The same committee who produced that last chart–the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by Republicans Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Kevin Brady of Texas–is back at again, only with a chart that’s even more hideous, complex, and crazy looking:

As Charles Blow, The New York Times’s visual op-ed columnist, quips, “They’re using this chart like a drunken man uses lampposts–for support rather than for illumination.”

There is, for example, this legend, which is basically a collection of political scare-words–“Rationing!” “Taxes!” “New Government!” “Mandates” “Rationing Again!” All this despite the fact that the best estimates available show that our new health care system should be able to cut costs by $1.3 trillion in 20 years. Not to mention that each of those words involve interpretation–which I’m not too sure we can trust in this case.

But on a purely design level, let’s compare this new chart to the old Republican version. The content is leagues more ridiculous, but the new one is basically better designed–they clearly hired someone that knew programs other than PowerPoint. Granted, it’s still hideous, but the sad thing is that it’s better looking in the hopes of reaching more people–and further muddying the chances for and honest debate about health care.